Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Black Throne 01 - The Black Queen

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THE BLACK QUEEN

The Fey Empire has been at peace for fifteen years.

But Queen Arianna, who holds the Black Throne, has become increasingly troubled by

a mysterious presence that is waking in her mind. It is a force of ruthless power,

determined to seize the throne even if it means destroying Arianna’s very essence in the

process. And when the queen’s body is not her own, it spells trouble for a warlike empire

already beginning to chafe under the strictures of peace.

Worse, it seems that the only person who can help Arianna is her brother, Gift, the

legitimate heir to the Black Throne—and the one the Throne itself has chosen as ruler. To

refuse its summoning could bring disaster, but to accept it could be more dire still. So

while his sister is locked in a battle to save her very soul, Gift must use his incomplete

knowledge of magic in a desperate fight to discover a solution. At stake is the fate of the

entire world—which stands poised on the brink of unimaginable chaos.

VISION OF DARKNESS

Coulter was about to leave when the hair on the back of his neck rose. A sensation

came out of the northwest. He turned, and saw a golden light threaded with black. It

flowed like a river through the sky, but the light had a beginning and an end. The light

had a feeling. It drew and repelled him at the same time.

He got a sense of Arianna, as if he were with her, as if he were almost a part of her. She

was in great pain, extreme pain, pain so severe it was ripping her from the inside out.

He fell to his knees with the power of it. He wasn’t in pain—he knew it was her

pain—but it felled him just the same. “Ari,” he whispered—

And then the feeling was gone as if it had never been. He raised his head toward the

sky. The light had passed. The presences were gone.

“Are you all right?” Leen asked.

Coulter put a hand on hers. He had no words for what he had just felt. “I’m fine,” he

said, “but something has changed.”

“What?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I don’t think things are going to be quiet anymore.”

The Black Throne Series

THE BLACK QUEEN

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Bantam Books

New York Toronto London Sydney Auckland

Copyright notice

Contents

The Signal

1 2 3 4 5 6

Emergence

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

The Rescue

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

The Black Queen

34 35 36

For Loren and Heather Coleman, with love.

Acknowledgments

Thanks on this one go to Anne Groell for the brainstorming and for taking chances; to

Merrilee Heifetz for staying the course; to Dean Wesley Smith who helped me find some

important solutions; and to everyone who asked me what was going to happen next.

The Signal

Chapter One

contents - next

The Eccrasian mountains were the tallest mountains Gift had ever seen. Even though

he had lived near them for the last five years, he still marveled at their height and their

power. Their faintly red rock made him feel as if he were at home, but their rounded

peaks spoke of an age, a timelessness, that he hadn’t seen anywhere else in the world.

He stood outside the Student’s Hut in the Protectors Village and waited for Madot.

Dawn had just touched the tips of the mountains, the sunlight a pale yellow as it rose over

the ancient peaks. It would take another hour before the light reached him.

The village was quiet. Many of the Shaman were already busy with their daily tasks.

Others, the night guardians, slept. It had taken him almost a year to get used to the

rhythms of the Protectors. They gathered much of their food, and the rest was brought to

them by the nearby Fey Infantry garrison, a custom that was hundreds, perhaps

thousands of years old. No commerce took place here. Protectors Village served two

functions: it housed the Shaman dedicated to the guarding of the Place of Power, and it

gave the young apprentices a school of sorts, a place to train where they would be

undisturbed by the outside world.

Fifty stone huts huddled on the plateau. They were round and made out of mountain

rock. They had no windows and only one door. Some of the huts were built for several

inhabitants, like the Student’s Hut. Some were built for one person: a full-fledged Shaman

who had to, by rights, live alone.

Gift wasn’t a Shaman yet, and he wouldn’t be for a long time. He had decades of

training ahead of him. Madot, his main teacher, believed that he could cut his training

short because of the power of his magic, the unprecedented strength of his Vision, but she

was only guessing. There had never been an apprentice like Gift in the entire history of

the Fey. His magic was unique—his heritage was unique—and because of those things, his

future was uncertain.

He rubbed his hands together in the early morning chill. Madot had instructed him to

wear only his apprentice’s robes. She was going to take him to the Place of Power, several

years before most apprentices were ever taken. It was said that a goat herder found this

cave, and took his family inside. When they came out, they were Fey.

Simply entering the cave did not create a Fey. There was magic in a Place of Power

that when tapped, altered everything. That much he knew without being taught. He had

discovered a second Place of Power fifteen years before, and had lived in it for several

weeks. There he had seen things he still did not comprehend, things that had changed his

life forever.

He would not be standing here if he hadn’t lived in that place.

He shifted from one bare foot to the other. His toes were growing cold. The bottoms of

his feet had become hard from use. He rarely wore shoes—they were frowned upon by

the Shaman—but usually he was moving. He almost never stood still.

Madot saw that as a flaw. She saw many things about him as flaws. He had been raised

by adoptive parents who had no idea how to control his Visionary magic, and he had used

his talents in ways that the Shaman here frowned upon. That his spells had been

successful didn’t matter, nor did the fact that with them he had saved hundreds of lives.

That he had misused the magic was the important thing, the thing they wanted to corral

in him.

Wild magic, or so Madot called it. She said his wild magic and his impatience were his

greatest faults. Until he had come here, he thought his wild magic was his greatest asset.

He hadn’t even known he was impatient until he had come to a place where time seemed

to have stopped.

There were no regular schedules as there had been when he lived in a Fey military

camp, no rhythms as there had been when he lived in the rural areas of his homeland,

Blue Isle. Here the Shaman went about their business as if they were being governed

from within. He always felt at loose ends. He wanted to stay busy, although sometimes

there was nothing to do.

Madot said he had to get used to quiet. He thought that the most difficult thing of all.

He glanced up the mountainside. The Place of Power was a morning’s climb from the

Protector’s Village. From here, he could see the silvery shimmer that marked the cave’s

entrance. His stomach jumped slightly. He had no idea how different this Place of Power

would be from the one he discovered on Blue Isle. On Blue Isle, the Place of Power

contained items from the Isle’s main religion, Rocaanism. But Rocaanism wasn’t practiced

anywhere on this continent, known as Vion. Here, at the foundation of the Fey Empire,

the word “religion” wasn’t used at all.

Finally, he saw the door to Madot’s hut open. She stepped outside and sniffed the air,

as she always did, as if the faint fragrances on the breeze gave her information that Gift

could never get. To him, all the smells were familiar: the dusty sharpness of the

mountains themselves; the pungent odor of the ceta plants that grew perennially behind

the Student’s Hut; the stench of the manure that he and the other students had spread on

the communal garden just the night before. Nothing stood out, and nothing was

unexpected. Once he had asked her what she smelled, and she had smiled.

The future, boy, she had said. Just the future.

It also took him a while to get used to being called “boy.” He was thirty-three years

old, a full adult in most places. To many Shaman, though, a thirty-three-year-old was still

in his childhood. Most full Shaman didn’t begin their solitary practices until they were

ninety or older.

The Shaman were the longest lived of the Fey, and it was a good thing, because so few

had the ability to become Shaman. Of those who did, even fewer chose the work. It was

arduous and its rewards were few. He still thought of the Shaman who helped raise

him—a woman he thought of as his father’s Shaman, even though his father hadn’t been

Fey—and of the sacrifices she had made so that her Vision, her dream for the future,

could come true. She had died for that dream. Apprentices did not become Shaman until

they were ready to make that supreme sacrifice. It was the one area that Gift was

confident he would pass. He had sacrificed so much over the years that sacrificing his life

seemed a very small thing indeed.

Madot was watching him. Her eyes were dark against her wizened skin. Her white hair

surrounded her face like a nimbus. The hair was the unifying feature of all the Shaman,

the hair and the desiccated look of the body, the skin. It was as if in training their Vision

to See and Foresee, they had lost something vital, something that nourished them from

within.

Gift had none of that look. He favored his Fey mother in most things, but it was

obvious that Gift was not fully Fey. His father had been the King of Blue Isle, and the

people there were short, blond-haired and blue-eyed, with skin so fair that it turned red

in the sun. Gift’s Fey heritage showed in his height, his hair, and his faintly pointed ears,

but his Islander heritage diluted his skin to a golden brown, made his cheeks round

instead of angular, and gave his eyes a vivid blueness that usually startled any Fey

meeting him for the first time.

Madot found Gift’s appearance cause for concern. He had been having Visions since he

was a child, and he had first used his Visionary powers when he was three. Thirty years of

such extreme magic should have taken a toll on his skin, his hair, his face, but it had not.

And that worried her. Once she had mumbled that perhaps he hadn’t tapped his full

power yet, and once she had said that perhaps his magic was something Other, something

so different that the rules no longer applied.

“You are being impatient,” she said as she approached him, her dark robes flowing

around her. Her voice was high and warm. He would have called it youthful if he had

heard it without seeing her. Yet she was among the oldest of the Shaman in the village,

and one of the most powerful.

He smiled at her accusation. She was correct. He was impatient. “I was trying to wait,”

he said.

“Trying forces you to be impatient. You must not try. You must simply be.”

He shook his head slightly. “You’ve been telling me that for five years.”

“And for five years you have not understood me.”

“Then perhaps the problem is with the messenger, not the recipient.”

She smiled at him, and her eyes twinkled. The expression filled her tiny face with

wrinkles and made her look like a wizened infant. “That’s the argument of the impatient.”

He shrugged. “Well, we’ve already established that.”

She laughed, then put a hand on his arm. “Are you ready for a climb?”

“I have been for years.”

“No,” she said, the smile suddenly gone. “You have not. You have wanted to go for

years. But you have not been ready.”

“And you think I am now?”

“I didn’t say that either.”

He waited. Word games were part of a Shaman’s business. It was canon here that

information given too easily was wasted on its hearer.

“You want to ask me,” she said, looking up at him.

“I do. But I’m trying to be patient.”

“That ‘try’ word again.” She sighed. “Ask anyway.”

“Why are you taking me up there today?”

She looked away from him. “ ‘The hand that holds the scepter shall hold it no more,

and the man behind the throne shall reveal himself in all his glory.’ Have you heard that

before?”

“No,” he said, startled. He thought he had heard all the prophecies about the Black

Throne.

“Four had visits from the Powers last night. Those were the words given.” Four meant

four of the Shaman, probably those guarding the Place of Power. The Powers were the

spirits of the Fey dead who, from the planes beyond, guided the living. At least that was

how they were once explained to him. The Shaman believed that the Powers were more

than that, and that their abilities were indescribable to mere mortals.

Madot was watching him closely.

He shook his head slightly. “I don’t see the connection.”

“Shamanistic Visions are always about the Black Throne.”

“I know that,” he said. “But I thought the Visions could foretell any future point from

now to a thousand years from now.”

“This wasn’t a strict Vision. No one Saw events. All they heard were words. They

believe it to be a Warning.”

A shiver ran down Gift’s back. But he kept his mind focused on the conversation. He

didn’t want to speculate, not yet. If he had learned anything from his teachers, it had

been that speculation could dilute a message.

“I still don’t understand why that made you decide I’m ready for my first visit to the

Place of Power.”

“It is not your readiness we are dealing with,” she said, and he knew that the “we” in

that sentence did not refer to him, but to the full Shaman in the village.

“Then what is it?” he asked.

“Your presence.”

“You may ask me to leave?”

“I didn’t say that.” Her grip tightened on his arm, and she led him around the

Student’s Hut to one of the many paths that led to the steps carved into the

mountainside.

His entire body was tense. What he had thought a reward for progress in his studies

was turning out to be something else altogether. A test of some sort. A decision, perhaps

already made, to treat him differently than the other students or to make him leave.

He didn’t want to leave. He was born a Visionary, the most powerful Visionary in the

history of the Fey, and a Visionary had two choices: he could lead or he could become a

Shaman. Gift had had a taste of leadership. He had seen the compromises it caused, the

responsibility it held for other people’s lives. He had seen how Visionary Leadership could

be corrupted, and how such a Leader could often rely on no one but himself.

Visionary Leadership also required a harshness, a warrior’s nature, a willingness to

sacrifice one life for the good of all others. Gift had watched his grandfather, his

great-grandfather, his father, and now his sister make such decisions. He wanted no part

of it.

The life of the Shaman appealed to him. Never did a Shaman take a life. If he did, he

would lose his powers. The Shaman’s nature was at its heart peaceful. Madot had once

said that put Shaman at odds with all the rest of the Fey.

At the time, Gift hadn’t cared. His sister Arianna, in her role as Black Queen of the

Fey, had been attempting to alter the nature of the Fey. She wasn’t full Fey any more

than he was, and she had been raised an Islander. For fifteen years she had held the Fey

Empire together using diplomacy and tact. Before that the Fey Empire had been a

conquering empire, and its hereditary ruler was often the best warrior among the Fey.

Arianna had a warrior’s spirit, but she lacked the conqueror’s drive. She believed the

Empire would become stronger by consolidating its holdings, and using its resources to

grow richer, not to expand. So far, it had been working. In fact, it had been working so

well that Gift felt he could leave her side and immerse himself in his apprenticeship.

Was that what the Warning was about? If Arianna died now, childless, Gift would

inherit her Throne. The Black Throne only went to those of Black Blood. The Black Blood

passed through his mother, Jewel. Gift was the eldest. Arianna only held the throne

because he had given it to her willingly. It had been something he felt she was more

suited to than he.

He knew better than to ask Madot any more about the Warning. She would answer

him in her own time. She led him to the stairs.

They were ancient and well tended, carved out of the mountainside. Their surface was

smooth and shiny, but not slick. Every morning and every evening, one of the Protectors

swept the stairs. Once a week, another Protector washed them. If the stone cracked or

wore too thin, the Shaman told one of the Infantry when the food deliveries came, and

within the week, Domestics who specialized in stone masonry arrived to fix the problem.

The Domestics also spelled the stairs so that no one could slip on them or fall down them.

The spells were as ancient as the stone, and in all the centuries that the Protectors had

guarded the Place of Power, no one had been injured climbing to or from the cave.

As he climbed beside Madot, Gift wondered if the Domestics also spelled the stairs to

make the trip easier. His legs felt lighter, as if the muscles in his thighs had to do no work

at all. He almost felt as if he could sprint up the mountainside, but he restrained himself.

The climb was a long one, and he knew that running would only exhaust himself later.

So he savored the trip. The ancient staircase was carved deep into the rocks, and as he

moved, he could see the veins of red running beneath the surface, like blood beneath the

skin. Partway up, he traced a finger along one of the veins: it was warmer than he

expected. Madot watched his movement, and smiled.

She said little and that was not like her. Usually she used every moment to teach him.

There were seven apprentices in Protectors Village right now, and most were taught by

all the Shaman. But Gift had Madot as his main teacher because the Shaman had been

divided about his presence from the beginning. Some had been frightened of him. He was

the first Shamanic candidate of Black Blood ever, and many did not believe that he was

here to become a Shaman, but rather to learn how to dismantle them.

He understood the belief. It showed that the Shaman understood the kind of cunning

that had ruled his grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s lives. If Gift had been like

them—and he wasn’t in any way that he knew of— he would have found some way to

infiltrate the Shaman, especially now.

A ruthless ruler would want to destroy the Shaman, and the Place they guarded. Ever

since the second Place of Power had been discovered, the Shaman had been worried. Fey

legend said this: There are three Places of Power. Link through them, and the Triangle

of Might will reform the world.

For centuries, the Fey had debated what the prophecy meant. Did “reform the world”

mean that everything would be destroyed? Or did it mean that the world would become

strictly a Fey place, a place where all diversity was destroyed? Most agreed, though, that

discovering the Triangle would benefit the Fey, as discovering the cave had benefited the

goat herder and his family by giving them powers undreamed of before. Controlling the

Triangle, most believed, would make the Fey gods.

Shaman believed that once the second Place of Power had been discovered, the third

would be easy to find. A Shaman would stand within the first Place of Power, another

Shaman would stand in the second, and together they would triangulate the power, and

learn where the third was located.

But discovery of the Triangle frightened everyone. Gift had set up, at his sister’s

request, guards for the second Place of Power. Those guards did not allow a Shaman into

it. The Black Family, at least Gift and Arianna’s branch of it, did not want anyone to have

access to the Triangle. Gift and Arianna could have attempted to triangulate the power

and learn where the third Place of Power was. So far, they had chosen not to. Arianna

believed, and Gift agreed, that there was no need to unleash more magic upon the world.

The Shaman, on the other hand, had requested an opportunity to triangulate the

Places of Power, and Arianna had refused them. Then the Shaman had made it clear that

they guarded the first Place of Power and they did not want a member of the Black

Family to enter it. The Shaman feared such power in the hands of the Black Family, and

would have done whatever they could, short of fighting the family themselves, to prevent

the Black Family from controlling the Triangle.

The Shaman believed that warrior magic, as represented by the Black Family, would

use the Triangle for harm. They believed that only Domestic magic should control such

power, and they guarded this Place of Power to prove their point.

Yet they were taking him there now—and the fact that he was one of the few who had

ever seen the second Place of Power made this event even stranger.

He wondered what the Protectors had said. They were the main guardians of this

Place of Power, and they had fought his entry into the village. They hadn’t relaxed their

vigilance in five years.

Halfway up, he and Madot stopped. A platform with benches carved from stone

indicated that this was the designated resting point. Madot sat in the left bench and

indicated that Gift sit in the right.

He didn’t want to. He wanted to keep climbing. But that was the impatience she was

trying to train out of him. He sat.

The bench was cold beneath him, but then it had no veins of red running through it. It

faced westward, providing a spectacular view.

The Eccrasian Mountains extended as far as the eye could see. In Vion, distances were

vast, and the countries were sparsely populated. These mountains bisected Vion; another

shorter range provided its western border. The Fey originated in the mountains, and

were like no other race in Vion. Gift could see why. It took a hardy and combative people

to survive in this place.

It was early spring, and there was still snow all the way to the tree line on most of the

mountain peaks. This one, known as Protectors Mount, never had snow, no matter what

time of year. Some said it was because of the Place of Power. Others believed it was

because this mountain was alive. Whatever the cause, it made life in Protectors Village

just a little easier than it would have been otherwise.

The wind was bracing here. It whipped at Gift’s cheeks. He threaded his fingers

together. His bare feet were warm on the stone platform. He knew if he looked down, he

would see more veins of red below. But he continued to stare over the mountains.

He hadn’t been this high before. The rugged peaks were white or gray, and then

tapered into a lush greenness provided by a crop of sturdy mountain pines. The valleys

down below were lost in morning mist. It was as if he were floating above the clouds.

He could feel Madot’s gaze. When he turned, he expected to see her usual indulgent

smile. Instead, he saw a deep and unusual sadness on her face.

A small shiver ran through him.

“Let’s go,” she said, and stood. This time she did not take his arm. She walked ahead of

him on the stairs, establishing a pace that was more strenuous than the one before.

He was able to keep up easily, however. The lightness in his legs he had felt earlier was

still there. The only difference now was that the stairs were steeper, and he had no

chance to observe the sights around him. He had to concentrate on keeping up with

Madot.

He had never seen her move so fast. It was almost as if revealing her sadness had

embarrassed her.

Or perhaps she had revealed too much.

They reached a second, smaller plateau, and from there he could feel it, the power of

the cave ahead. It drew him like a woman’s touch. He was familiar with this feeling. It was

how he had discovered the Place of Power on Blue Isle. He also had to live with a muted

version of it in Protectors Village. Live with it, and deny it at the same time.

Here there was no denial. He allowed the feeling to guide him. He gazed up, and saw

the entrance glowing silver. His heart leaped. That sense of homecoming had returned.

Madot was watching him again. “The feeling is strong in you,” she said, and the words

were a statement, not a question. It almost sounded as if she were disappointed by what

she saw.

“Shouldn’t it be?” he asked, unable to take his gaze off that entrance.

She didn’t answer him. Instead, she led him up the last flight of stairs. These were so

steep they were almost a ladder. He had no trouble negotiating them, but he wondered if

others did, if the design was purposeful, to prevent unwanteds from coming to this Place

of Power.

The stairs ended in another ledge, this one carved flat and maintained to a polished

perfection. Pelo, one of the Shaman Protectors, stood at the top of the stairs.

He was skinny and tall, his white hair as chaotic as Madot’s. He wore a dark Shaman’s

robe to blend in with the mountain. He carried no weapon, only a large staff carved from

esada wood. He stepped back as Gift climbed onto the ledge. His dark eyes held

disapproval, and something else, something even more unsettling.

“One shouldn’t test a Warning,” Pelo said to Madot.

The look she gave him was dismissive. She didn’t bother to reply.

“He has friends at the other Place of Power,” Pelo said. “You know we cannot let him

inside.”

“There are no Shaman currently on Blue Isle,” Madot said.

“But there are powerful Visionaries.”

Gift stood perfectly still during the exchange. The wind was stronger here, and colder.

It buffeted him and he had to constantly shift his weight to keep his balance.

“I am doing what my Vision told me to do five years ago,” Madot said.

“Why did you not do it then?” Pelo asked.

“Because there was no need.”

“I do not believe there is a need now.”

“The Powers issued a Warning.”

“Did they?” Pelo asked. “There was no Vision attached.”

Gift shifted. Had Madot acted on her own? He didn’t like that. “I have never wanted

special treatment,” he said. “I want to be an apprentice like the others. Bring me up here

when the time is right, for them and for me. Please. If this is wrong—”

“No one has said it’s wrong,” Madot snapped.

Pelo raised a single eyebrow. The effect made him look like a quizzical dog. “I haven’t

said it, but I should have. It is wrong. The boy does not belong here. He belongs with his

family.”

“Near the other Place of Power?” Madot asked.

Gift had never seen her agitated before. She wasn’t certain of what she was doing

either. “I don’t want to leave,” he said gently. “I do want to learn how to use my powers

for healing magic, not warrior magic. I am not a Domestic. I’m a Visionary. The only

choice left to me is to become a Shaman.”

“You have the Black Throne,” Pelo said. “By rights— by Fey law—you should be sitting

on it. You and your sister, with your wild magics, believe you are above Fey law and Fey

custom. You believed you could give her your Throne. But the Throne chooses whom it

will, and for centuries it has chosen your family. Your sister has denied her Feyness all

her life—”

“She is more Fey than I ever was,” Gift said.

“She was raised by outsiders,” Pelo said. “She does not know our customs. She is

fierce, but she is no warrior. We have taken no land in fifteen years.”

“More than that,” Gift said. “My great-grandfather Rugad took no land for twenty

before that. He was waiting to hold Blue Isle.”

“And now we have Blue Isle. Tradition says we move to Leut and conquer it.”

Gift’s mouth was dry. He was suddenly thirsty. He and Madot had brought no water or

food with them. He wondered if that were customary or an oversight.

“I have never heard a Shaman argue for war before,” he said.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Black Throne 01 - The Black Queen

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